First published on the Arts Voyager’s sister publication Art Investment News on November 26, 2012.

I was trying to remember what famous artist lived on the street Maurice Utrillo depicts in his oil painting “Maison de Mimi Pinson, Rue du Mont-Cenis sous la neige, Montmartre” — one of the gems on auction at Christie’s Paris’s Impressionist and Modern Sale November 28 — when I realized that it was the inverse: I used to sip cappuccino on the terrace of a cafe on the rue Mt. Cenis, and was thrilled to discover Utrillo had actually painted this corner of this street, one of the many in Montmartre which, perched atop stairs, looks out on just the tops of the buildings of the street below. These streetscapes are mostly unchanged in the 75 or so years since Utrillo painted them. I’ve previously dismissed Utrillo as a postcard painter, whose principal subject — Montmartre — accounts for much of his charm, as well as the exorbitant prices for his oeuvre. But in fact, seeing this tableau suggests the contrary. In similar excursions around Paris and its environs, searching for the spots the Impressionists and their successors depicted, I’ve often been disappointed; the reality is usually more humble, more drab than its painterly record. (How deflated I was to discover that the Square Hector Berlioz on the Place Adolphe Max, resplendent in Vuillard’s painting from the window of the apartment he shared with his mother above it, was in reality so tiny and covered with Astroturf!) Utrillo, by contrast, does not embellish his canvas; the facade on the building on the left, like the wall across the street, are just as worn and grey as they really are, just as the metal shutters look about to fall apart. This too — like the chestnut trees on the boulevards — is part of eternal Paris. He also captures the seductive melancholy of Montmartre, its edge here only slightly softened by a blanket of snow.

For this auction, my comments on the rest of our selection are included in the captions below: